Imagine lazing by a pool on a warm summer’s day and drifting off into a gentle sleep when suddenly, someone throws a bucket of iced water in your face. Then another. And another, until you are drenched, cold and very much awake.

This captures how I felt over the New Year break as I read a newly translated book about a central question of our time: why is that, even as the dangers of a warming world grow ever more alarmingly visible and even though we have known what to do for decades, the response to the gathering climate threat continues to be so inadequate?

The answer, says German sociologist Jens Beckert, is that fundamental characteristics of contemporary life — modern capitalism, liberal democracy and our attachment to consumption — make it virtually impossible to deliver what the future health of the planet requires.